LONDON, July 7 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned on Thursday after the support for him evaporated amid an avalanche of ministerial resignations over his scandal-hit leadership.
Johnson, however, said he will remain prime minister until a new Tory leader is chosen.
"The will of the parliamentary party is clear and the process for choosing a new leader should begin," he said in a statement to the country, adding that the timetable for choosing a new leader will be announced next week.
Johnson's government began disintegrating since Tuesday when Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak resigned from their posts as health secretary and chancellor of the exchequer respectively. The number of resignations from his government quickly snowballed to 50 by Thursday morning, bringing his government close to a collapse.
In his resignation speech, he took a jab at the mass exodus, calling it "herd instinct."
"As we've seen at Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves. And my friends, in politics, no one is remotely indispensable, and our brilliant and Darwinian system will produce another leader," he said.
But the Tories have long been worrying that Johnson, who gave the Conservatives a landslide victory in the general elections in 2019, has become a liability after waves of scandals eroded confidence in him and cast a shadow on the party's political future in the next general elections in 2024. Last month, the Tories lost two crucial House of Commons seats in by-elections.
For months, Johnson and his government have been dogged by a seemingly endless string of headline-grabbing scandals.
Johnson became the first serving British prime minister in history to break the law after receiving a fine from the police for attending a party in 2020 during the country's COVID-19 lockdown. Revelations of him and his employees revel in rules-busting booze-fueled parties over the past two years at Downing Street infuriated the British public.
Though he survived a no-confidence vote recently within his Conservative Party over the so-called Partygate scandal, over 40 percent of his own party voted against him and the forces that want him to go have been gaining momentum following more untoward revelations.
The latest scandal involved Johnson's appointment of lawmaker Christopher Pincher to deputy chief whip despite being informed of formal complaints about his alleged sexual misconduct.
Stuart Wilks-Heeg, professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool, told Xinhua that the embattled prime minister finally chose to step down on Thursday as he had exhausted his options, and his resignation brought temporary relief to the fast-evolving political drama.
"He was really running out of options. As we've seen, the number of cabinet ministers and junior ministers and other people involved in government resigning had just reached levels where it was impossible for him to carry on without offering his resignation. He just couldn't carry on as prime minister. He'd run out of road," he said.
"So for the moment, potentially, that chaos (at Downing Street) has stopped," he said.
Wilks-Heeg, however, said he believes the wrangling won't end soon and whoever wins in the Conservative leadership contest will face a challenging task of reuniting the now much divided party and restoring its credibility.
"It takes time. If there are 10, 15, 20 candidates, it takes time. There has to be a series of votes among Conservative MPs to whittle that down to two. And then those two names need to go out to Conservative Party members," he said.
"The party is clearly divided. In a sense, it's become a bit more united in recent days because it's united against Boris Johnson. But the recriminations from this process will be bitter and that will be played out in the leadership contest which must now follow," he said.
"It will be really hard for whoever becomes leader of the Conservatives later on this year, or perhaps sooner than that. It will be really hard for them to bring the party back together in this context and present themselves to the electorate the next election as a credible force," he added.
